He drove me to a small roadside café full of ranch hands having their morning coffee, where I telephoned the duty officer at Kingsville and explained our predicament. A Navy van was soon on the way to pick us up. I thanked the gentleman to whose day my instructor and I had brought a little excitement. I also learned that across the road was the legendary King Ranch, the inspirational source for Edna Ferber’s book, Giant.
On the van ride to the air station, I knew Anne would be shaken up by what happened. As a young girl, she and her mother went through a similar hell when Mac Williams was shot down in the Philippines and evaded capture for several weeks. Anne and her mother were in agonizing limbo, not knowing whether Mac was alive or dead. Still, I was alive and well and none the worse for wear.
Anne and I lived in an apartment in Corpus Christi, and I was commuting an hour each way to the base at Kingsville. That was bad enough. Now I’d have to tell her I was in a crash—crash, in this case, being perhaps too harsh a word.
Several months before the mishap I had driven alone to Pensacola, while Anne stayed with her parents in Glenview, with the understanding we would marry in December. The “Cradle of Aviation” is the descriptive phrase attached to Pensacola, a quiet town on the panhandle of Florida, several driving hours east of New Orleans.
Nine officers, twenty-three enlisted men, and seven seaplanes arrived at Pensacola to set up a flying school in January 1914. This unit had been operating in Annapolis. Its arrival in Florida began an enduring relationship between the community of Pensacola and naval aviation that prevails today. Pensacola is at the heart of naval aviation training. Plus, there’s another side to that heart, because Pensacola has also been referred to as “The Mother of Naval Aviation” because of the large number of aspiring naval aviators who married girls from there. Indeed, Anne was the first baby born in 1932 in Pensacola while her father had duty there.
I actually was assigned to Whiting Field in Milton, Florida, a few miles north of Pensacola for basic instruction in the SNJ. The field, which consisted of two separate sets of runways—North Field and South Field, adjacent to each other—was named after Capt. Ken Whiting, a legendary flyer and the Navy’s first landing signal officer (LSO)—the guy who stands on a platform at the aft edge of the flight deck helping guide pilots to landings on the ship. In those days it took extraordinary courage to be an LSO.
Whiting was the executive officer on the USS Langley, the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, which was really a collier, or coal ship, with a wooden deck built over it. One day at sea, when a squadron of biplanes was making landings on the ship and having a miserable time getting aboard, Whiting became impatient with the airmanship on display by the pilots. Frustrated, he grabbed the white hats of two nearby sailors and climbed up onto the stern of the flight deck. Executing impromptu, but common-sense signals, he waved his arms, with the hats in his hands, and tilted his body this way and that, visually signaling the oncoming pilots to turn steeper or shallower, to climb or to descend, accordingly. It worked, and the precedent was set for the introduction of LSOs to the fleet. Early on, LSOs used tennis racket-sized paddles to “wave” aircraft aboard. Nowadays, a sophisticated lens system and other computerized aids help the flyers land safely on the flattops. But expertly trained LSOs remain on the platform at the edge of the stern deck, radio telephone in hand, talking pilots down when necessary.
I was amazed at the free time I had going through the training command compared to the feverish pace of the days and nights at Annapolis. There was an abundance of lectures and briefings in addition to the flights, but compared to the Academy, I felt that there was plenty of time left over to do my own thing. Every weekend we hit the white sandy beaches of Pensacola.
I readily took to flying. I made mistakes like everyone else but got the hang of basic air work rather quickly and absorbed the systematic procedures inherent in flying the Navy way. Basic air work consisted of controlling airspeed, altitude, and attitude, banking without losing or gaining height, trimming the aircraft smoothly, and staying ahead of the SNJ so that you flew it rather than having the aircraft fly you. I won’t say I was a “natural,” one of those rare types who is born to the cockpit. At the same time, I was never uncomfortable or anxious in the aircraft. It was an aerial classroom in which I thrived. When I soloed at Whiting’s South Field in December 1951, I felt the same exhilarating self-satisfaction as my shipmates, but I knew primary training was only a start. I enjoyed flying, because it required a precise coordination of mental and physical skills, two areas where I thrived.
In December I left the relative warmth of northern Florida and motored to Glenview for the wedding. My family joined us, and Anne and I were married three days after Christmas, with both families present. We elected to honeymoon on the return trip south, and when we left the Chicago area, thirty-six inches of snow lay on the ground. Florida here we come.
We lived in a rented apartment in Pensacola at Navy Point, and I drove in a car pool to Whiting Field, completing the basic course with minimum problems. I was moving along through the syllabus quicker than the others in my class of twenty-five; I wanted to get my wings as soon as possible, hoping for assignment to a squadron fighting in Korea.
After I completed the basic course, Anne and I loaded the car and drove west to Corpus Christi, Texas, for advanced flight training at Naval Air Auxiliary Air Station Kingsville. We set up camp in Corpus Christi, and I was once again a commuter, driving an hour south to Kingsville and returning home each evening in the company of fellow students.
A young married couple going through flight training knew a marvelous experience in large part because of the friendships and social activities accompanying our collective pursuit of gold wings. Compared to later generations, my group tended to marry in their early twenties, so married men far outnumbered bachelors. The work was challenging and the hours long, but the tedium was erased by many joyous parties. Invariably, the men exchanged sea, or should I say, air stories, complete with hands waving through the air imitating airplanes, accompanied by narratives of aerial adventures, often of questionable veracity. The women listened for a while before, bored by the magnificent tales of flying, they circled their own wagons to discuss the challenges of being married to prospective Navy pilots and rearing their children. Those were memorable days.
I must admit flying came easy to me. I was not a “natural” in the sense that I jumped into the cockpit, flipped a switch, and roared off into the wild blue as if born to fly. I prepared for the flights with considerable study, tried to fly the sortie in my mind before even trudging out to the flight line and running through adverse contingencies, rehearsing the actions I would need to take in order to resolve them.
I could handle basic maneuvers without difficulty, actually excelling in instrument flying, and when I made my first carrier landing in the SNJ on the USS Cabot on July 3, 1952, without a single wave off, I felt I was well on track.
I was transferred to Naval Auxiliary Air Station Kingsville to fly the F8F Bearcat, a powerful machine that was the successor to the Grumman-built F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, heroic performers in World War II. I flew part of the syllabus in the Bearcat, but some maneuvers in it were restricted because of structural problems that were then being corrected. As a result, I flew the F6F for bombing and air-to-air gunnery, which entailed high-g pull-ups and turns.
During basic flight training many of our instructors were reservists who had served during World War II and who had been recalled to active duty. They did this without complaint. One of my F8F instructors was Gordon Smith, a colorful aviator, who commanded a squadron of Skyraiders in the Vietnam War and eventually reached flag rank. Gordon had to bail out of his bomber at night in an unusual attitude after being hit by enemy fire. He survived the bailout, even though he glanced off the tail of his out-of-control aircraft before his parachute opened. He was badly injured but was rescued by helicopter from the sea.
I completed my advanced carrier qualifications on
the USS Wright in November 1952 in the Wildcat, again without a wave off, and shortly thereafter I became the first member of our twenty-five-man class to get wings. The ceremony was a straightforward affair without bells and whistles. Anne pinned on my wings, with Admiral Whiney, who was second in command to Vice Adm. John Dale Price, chief of naval air training, presiding.
Being first was not a goal, but I admit I put pressure on myself to get through the course as reasonably quickly as I could. From the outset, I “hawked” the training officers for unexpected openings or cancellations on the flight schedule, and instead of taking a few days off between phases of instruction, I proceeded directly to the next unit and tried to start right away. The war was still going on in Korea, and I believed I had a shot at duty with a squadron heading that way.
Luck followed me, and a dream came true, because I was one of a small number of newly designated aviators assigned to transition to jets. We didn’t have to pack up the car, because the jet-training unit was at Kingsville.
I remember a British film about the advent of jet flight. A test pilot has started the engine of his potential fighter plane. The engine produces the distinctive din of a spinning turbine, conveying the sense of immense power, like the sustained prelude of a thunderclap. “The most exciting sound in the world,” says one of the characters. I believe he was right.
I flew the straight-wing TV Seastar, which came in the single- and two-seat versions. It was a derivative of the Air Force’s P-80 Shooting Star. Although quicker reaction time on the part of a pilot is required in a jet compared to a piston-powered plane, a jet is easier to fly. In a prop, the pilot has to manipulate a fuel mixture control, a revolutions per minute (RPM) lever, and the throttle. When adding power, particularly on takeoff, engine torque, which pulls the nose to the left, has to be countered with a significant dose of right rudder to stay on the runway’s centerline. In a jet engine, there is no torque. You push the throttle forward and go.
Part of the jet syllabus included all-weather training in the Beech-built SNB, which was powered by a pair of Pratt and Whitney 450 horsepower engines. The pilot sat in the left seat, the student in the right. There was room for a couple more passengers in the cabin aft, one of whom might be another student waiting his turn at the controls.
We had to master the basics of descending and ascending at proscribed rates measured in feet per minute. We executed what were called standard-rate turns at a constant angle of bank while in those climbs, descents, and related maneuvers, all designed to exercise our scan patterns. Scan patterns are critical to anyone who flies, especially in weather conditions that force reliance on the instruments. A pilot must incessantly shift eyes from one gage to another and respond accordingly to the information each presented. The trick is, if you can detect an excessive turn rate or airspeed deceleration early and you reduce the turn or add power accordingly, you stay ahead of the airplane.
We learned to fly on designated airways, the network of strictly defined corridors in the sky used by aircraft traveling from one point to another. We had to discern audio signals based on Morse code transmitted from ground facilities through aircraft radios to our earphones. We learned to stay on the beam—the highway in the sky—or when we unintentionally deviated from it, how to return to the proper track in the sky using such tactics as the “fade 90,” a difficult procedure involving a ninety-degree turn from the proscribed course, intense listening for the proper audio signal, identifying your position based on it, and resuming the right heading.
Nowadays, with global position satellites, Tactical Air Navigation (TACAN), and other gadgets, I can say without equivocation that pilots have it easier.
One of my all-weather instructors was Lt. Cdr. Tom Hudner, an excellent pilot and an exceptionally mild-mannered guy. I told a fellow student one day that I really liked flying with Hudner and how quiet and gentlemanly he was.
The student said, “You know what he did in Korea, don’t you?”
“I knew he flew Corsairs over there,” I said.
“He’s the guy who crash-landed in the snow and tried to rescue Jesse Brown. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.”
I was stunned. I was vaguely aware of that mission but didn’t equate my instructor with it. Jesse Brown was in Hudner’s F4U Corsair squadron, was hit by enemy fire, and was forced to land on the frozen turf of North Korea. Hudner, circling above, saw that Brown, the Navy’s first black combat aviator, was trapped in the cockpit. In one of those perilous moments that separates a select few men from all the rest of us, Hudner made a decision to save another life that could have cost him his own. He landed his Corsair wheels up alongside Brown’s stricken plane, unstrapped, made his way over the hard-packed snow to Brown’s F4U, and tried to free him from the cockpit.
Tragically, the impact had compressed the front end of the F4U cockpit area, in effect clamping Brown’s legs in place. Exacerbating this, the skin of the aircraft was so slippery from the icy cold; Hudner could not gain a firm foothold. After a time, a lone helicopter pilot arrived with an ax to try and cut Brown loose. But Hudner and the helo pilot simply could not cut through the metal.
Despite their valiant efforts, they failed to free Brown. Nightfall was coming, and the helo had to return to its home base and the enemy had to be near. There was no choice but to abandon Brown, who asked his attempted rescuers to pass on his love to his wife. This was one of naval aviation’s most dramatic and heartbreaking episodes.
Now, here I was, a young pup, flying in sun-baked Corpus Christi a world away from the frigid landscape of North Korea, in southern Texas, with a man who had earned the highest military honor in the land.
Jet training went well, and I was one of a small handful of newly designated pilots rewarded with orders to a jet unit, the Ghostriders of Fighter Squadron 193, based at Naval Air Station Moffett Field, a few miles south of San Francisco. I would be flying the McDonnell straight-wing F2H Banshee, the most advanced jet fighter in the inventory. For me, this was naval aviator’s heaven. VF-193 was the Navy’s only jet night fighter squadron, the key word here being “night.”
In 1952 the Navy and Marine Corps had logged three and three-quarter million flight hours. During that time, 399 pilots and aircrew members were killed and we lost 708 aircraft as a result of accidents. That translates to a rate of fifty-four major mishaps every one hundred thousand hours in the air, an astounding figure by today’s standards, where the rate has been around two major accidents for every one hundred thousand flight hours and fatalities commensurately less.
I mention this because the advent of jet-propelled fighters and bombers, particularly those that operated from the existing straight-deck aircraft carriers, created a steep learning curve that was bound to result in accidents. This is not to say airplanes were falling out of the skies like leaves in autumn. However, it is to say naval aviation was considerably more hazardous in the early 1950s than it is today.
Many a career naval aviator will tell you his or her first tour of duty in a squadron was the most memorable, if not the best of all that followed. All of a sudden you are out from under the “I’m-looking-over-your-shoulder-to-make-sure-you-do-it-right” syndrome so pervasive in the training command to the world of “you’re a fleet pilot now!”
This does not preclude close scrutiny of a new pilot’s performance by seniors, especially the skipper. You are welcomed into a cadre of twenty or so fellow pilots with its own jets, its own complement of two hundred or so sailors who maintained the aircraft and the squadron records, and its own exclusive identity, manifest in our insignia, which we sewed onto our flight jackets and which appeared on the bulkheads in our hangar and on the Banshees themselves. Best of all, VF-193 had a true warrior’s mission, which was to shoot down the bad guys, and we were on our aircraft carrier, the USS Oriskany, headed for Korea, where the bad guys were. It doesn’t get much more macho than that.
Cdr. Deke Carr was our skipper, a stern and capable aviator with an aeronautical engineering d
egree but not much charisma. He was the antithesis of the individual who was our most blithe spirit and the absolute best pilot I ever knew, the irrepressible Alan Shepard. Shepard stuck in Carr’s craw, because Alan loved to exercise the Banshee to its extremes and did it well, but on occasion went too far.
As Skipper Carr once proclaimed, “Alan Shepard is an excellent aviator, but he occasionally exceeds the bounds of good flight discipline.”
Al was a graduate of the Navy’s Test Pilot School (TPS) in Patuxent River, Maryland. I lucked out and became his wingman, and even though our personalities were poles apart, we blended well and became close and lifelong friends. Where I was inclined to be temperate, Alan was venturesome. He liked the ladies and they liked him. More than anything else, he wanted to become a Blue Angel and was terribly disappointed that at that time only naval aviation cadets could qualify. Cadets were flight students, often without college degrees, who were in an enlisted status going through training and who became ensigns upon pinning on the gold wings. This policy eventually changed, but not in time for Alan, Naval Academy Class of 1945.
I was assigned as the line division officer, responsible for aircraft activities on the flight line. With the able assistance of a chief petty officer and other senior enlisted personnel, who had served in World War II and really knew their stuff, I supervised a wonderful group of young sailors who had the strenuous duty of preparing the jets for flight, fueling them, keeping them clean, sending us off, and meeting us when we returned to start the whole cycle again. It was one of the best jobs I ever had.
I took immense delight in working with the eighteen-, nineteen-, and twenty-year-olds, many of them from farms and impoverished areas, who were acclimating themselves, not without difficulty, to the disciplined life of the Navy.
I was later assigned as the personnel officer, and not long after became the administration officer with department head status. But my heart stayed with the sailors in the line division.
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